Univ of Minnesota Hosts Career Integration Conference

I’ve just returned from Minneapolis where I participated in , and spoke on the program, at the first-ever “career integration” conference in the U.S. You will find the program and speakers at http://www.umabroad.umn.edu/professionals/career-int/conference/sessions. There is an excellent list of open Resources on the topics covered at the conference on this page. A list which would add value on a campus career service or education abroad website (for students & staff).

We had about 200 professionals at the meeting – mostly from the mid-West and mid-Atlantic (along with my good friend, Jean-Marc Hachey, founder of “MyWorldAbroad,” at https://www.myworldabroad.com/ from Toronto). This is his new website containing all of the earlier resources found in his book, the “Big Guide to Living & Working Overseas.”

This meeting was important because of its singular focus on the topic of integrating (or as I’ve sometimes referred to it as “harmonizing”) both student career advising and study abroad advising. I’ve addressed this theme over the past decade, but, we now have momentum to raise the issue as part of the national conversation about the “worth” of college, the “return on investment” of the degree – or the longer-term value for career development & job searching of experiential learning via study/work/or service abroad – during the four-years of college.

While it seems logical and easy to simply assert that there is high value in going to college and learning abroad, every advisor knows this is no longer an easy decision for students to make (unless they are financially secure and can make such decisions without regard to whether or not there is added value to them in terms of post-graduation employment).

Increasingly, more and more campuses are seeing that as they both develop and implement “internationalization” policies, they also must provide the necessary staff resources to support students at all stages of their decision-making about leaving campus to widen their world views and explore international study/work or internships.

My recent publication, Campus Best Practices Supporting Education Abroad & Student Career Development http://www.aifsabroad.com/advisors/publications.asp discusses model campus efforts to integrate advising practices along with links to documents supporting such initiatives. You can find my earlier post about it in April…

Keep the dialogue going – write me at martyjtillman@gmail.com to share what you are doing on your campus!